Is Fiber the Next Protein?

Jessica Luong

Is Fiber the Next Protein?

Jessica Luong

Article Summary

The writer of the article is Sally Wadyka, a freelance writer and editor with a degree from Smith College. Her career history was being a staff writer and had editor roles at magazines such as Mademoiselle, Women’s Sport & Fitness, Vogue, and Glamor. Additionally, she was a contributing editor at the cooking magazine, Real Simple, and is currently a contributing editor at the magazine, Shape. Her publications has also appeared in works of New York Times, Cookie, Prevention, Martha Stewart Living, Runner’s work and msn.com. Along with all these roles, she also holds co-authorships of four books. For this article, it was found on Food Network underneath the blog section and was published on February 17th, 2016.

The article states that it seems that the new next diet is going to be a more fiber-based diet after the protein-focused diet. The article continues on to state that health benefits of fiber such as more satiety and lower risks of chronic diseases. The article also briefly states where to find sources of fiber and what is the recommended amount of fiber for the average American. She also mentions why the fiber intake is concerning for Americans.

Article Critique

One of the concerning factors of this article is that the author is not a registered dietian, and most of her work(s) consists of magazines rather than scholarly databases, websites, and organizations. Therefore, it appears that her main focus is more of diet fads in order for the magazines to sell rather than to disseminate knowledge. Thus, this decreases her credibility of this article due to her own lack of knowledge about nutrition.

Additionally, some of resources are questionable due to her citation of the source. For instance, when the author had referenced to Ms. Jessica Crandall, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She had not citied properly with having not stated when or where the person had stated the information. This occurred once again with another source, Dr. Martica Heaner where did not state where Dr. Heaner noted this. This issue continues when she had used a quote: “Research has shown that anywhere from 26 to 41 percent…” where she did not specify or cite to what the research is called or did during the study. Therefore, the biggest issues with her sources is most of them seem credible—however it is not possible to check back on these resources due to lack of proper citation.

Some of the information in article is misleading such as recommended goal of 30 grams of fiber daily because the recommended goal is dependent on a person’s sex and age as well as any medical conditions that may hinder the consumption of fiber and thus 30 grams is very generalized. (DeBruyne). Additionally, the author encourages the consumption of fiber but ignores the risks and consequences if too much fiber is consumed. She also failed to differentiate the different fibers, and the different effects of both which can affect the gastrointestinal tract in a different manner than the generalized fiber she is discussing in the article. Overall, the article lacked necessary detail to the readers, failed to give proper credit to those sources that she had used, and lacked credibility with the topic with her educational background.